The men in the bell didn't know what happened but they could tell by the pressure gauge that they were going down again, and this was certainly a situation to try anyone's nerves. The SQUALUS crew had already suffered enough torture - both physical and mental - but they were calm, and McDonald and Mihalowski kept up a running chatter of what was going on.
I listened to the discussions between Admiral Cole and the other officers as to the next move. I could well understand the situation because of my long association with the bell. I knew what they were talking about when they said it would be very dangerous to try to blow the ballast tanks and allow the chamber to come to the surface of its own accord. I well remembered the crash when we had come up under this same FALCON from only a few feet. If they blew the bell and it came to the surface with ever increasing speed as the pressure became less and it did hit under the FALCON, obviously all hands in the bell would be lost and perhaps the FALCON even would sink. The decision was reached to try and send a diver down to attach a new, heavier wire to the top of the bell. The diving crew had anticipated such a move and Duncan, First Class Torpedoman, was already dressed. Momsen gave him his instructions, which were simple. "Get on top of that chamber and try to shackle on the new retrieving wire.”
During this time, Squire had been brought to the fifty foot level and then whipped into the pressure chamber for the remainder of his decompression time. The so-called surface decompression was getting a real test in actual operation. Squire had done a magnificent job. From the time he left the FALCON until he had cut the downhaul seven-sixteenths plowed steel wire and started to the surface only twelve minutes had elapsed - one of the most remarkable feats ever to be performed in diving. But he was having to go through the long, slow decompression so that he would not develop the "bends".
Now another diver was going down; this time for an even more difficult task because working on top of that slippery, small, rounded bell was all but impossible. Duncan was in the water at 2145, on the way down. Momsen had told him what his job was, but accomplishing it was another matter. He landed on the bell six minutes after leaving the FALCON. The delay in descent was caused by the fact that he caught his suit on the frayed wire of the cable leading to the top of the bell. And worst of all - when he got on top of the bell he found that he was hopelessly fouled, with his lines tangled around the lines feeding air and light to the chamber. In trying to extricate himself, he slipped and almost fell the ten feet into the mud below. Such a fall would have been very serious for he would have been squeezed into his helmet, and if not actually killed, would have been knocked unconscious, and probably lost. Finally, even though he was groggy, tired, and horribly cold, he did work free his entangled lines. He was clear, but he hadn't the strength left to make the attempt to attach a new wire to the rescue bell. Momsen had to give the order, "We're bringing you up," and the tender worked him over until he was on the stage and safely on his way to the surface.